This is the most common one and the least final. Volume builders price a fixed range of products and details so the estimating is fast and the trades know what to expect. Anything outside the range is possible, it just needs to be priced and drawn. "Not standard" means not on the list, not impossible. The question to ask is what the upgrade path is, and whether it has been done before on this plan.

A variation is any change to the contract after it is signed. It is not a refusal, it is a notice that the change will be priced, written up and signed by both of you before it happens. The word only becomes a problem when it is used for something you thought was included. If you hear it before contract, ask for the change to be drawn into the plans and priced into the contract so it never becomes a variation at all.

Both are about sequence. Too late usually means the frame is up, the plaster is on or the order has been placed with a supplier. It is often genuinely too late, and the cost of undoing is real. Too early usually means the question belongs at a later meeting: colour selections, electrical walk, pre-plaster. It is a fair answer if you get a date for when it is the right time. It is a brush-off if nobody writes it down.

Sometimes true, often untested. Engineers do not forbid things, they size them. A bigger opening needs a bigger lintel or a steel beam. A wall removed needs the load carried another way. Those have a cost and sometimes a bulkhead, and the builder may not want the conversation. Ask whether the engineer has actually been asked. If they have, ask for the answer in writing. If they have not, ask what it would take to ask.

Listen to this one. It is often the builder's experience talking: the product fails, the detail leaks, the supplier is slow. Ask why. If the answer is specific, a product name and a failure they have seen, take it seriously. If the answer is vague, it usually means the trade does not like doing it or the margin is thin. You can still insist, and the builder may ask you to sign that you have been advised against it. That is fair.

Sales sends you to the estimator, the estimator to the drafter, the drafter to the supervisor, the supervisor to head office. Some of this is legitimate: the person in front of you genuinely cannot answer. Some of it is a loop designed to tire you out. The fix is to get names, and to put the question in an email to the person who can answer with a date you need it by.

Some things are actually no, and a good builder will tell you clearly. A ceiling height the trusses cannot give you without redesign. A room that would breach a setback. A window that cannot go on a boundary wall. A product the manufacturer will not warrant in a wet area. A change once the slab is poured. When you hear a no with a reason you can check, that is a builder being honest, and it is worth more than a yes that turns into a variation.